Guinness Onion Soup with Cheddar and Croutons

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! 

Do you have any St. Patrick’s Day traditions? Years and years ago, my friend Barb (Profiteroles and Ponytails, on hiatus right now) used to drag us and a bunch of her buddies to some Irish pub uptown. It became quite the tradition, each year a different venu, drinking beer and getting silly (and by getting silly, I am specifically referring to the particularly exuberant cheers when we smashed our beer glasses and broke a few!). When she moved out west, we just stopped celebrating. Then about 6 years ago (actually, 6 years and 2 weeks), my dear friend and colleague Andy and his partner Mark opened an Irish Pub in Leslieville called The Roy Public House (named after Mark’s dad who passed a few years earlier) and ever since we’ve been celebrating this holiday with a beer or two there (I might add, with mature calmness!). I just love heading over to the east end of Toronto, the pub is always filled with locals and friends and it’s a great spot to catch up over a pint. The food is pretty tasty too, the Cobb Salad and the Half Pound Beef Dip are a couple of our favourites. If you’re ever in the big smoke, you MUST drop by and have a pint and grab a bite. This particular St. Patrick’s Day will be no different…sometime tomorrow afternoon we’ll pop over to The Roy and raise a glass or two in honour of St. Patrick.

Have you ever had a recipe in your head for months and months? This Irish inspired soup was something I had at a rather unassuming Irish pub in Barrie last fall…we were heading up to my brother’s cottage for Thanksgiving and our normal Sushi lunch place, just off the highway had unexpectedly closed down so we needed a new place, fast. We had been running late and were very hungry so we literally stopped at the first place we found in old downtown and what luck that we did. They have a chef who insists on house-made menu items and the Guinness Onion Soup is one of her specialties so I had to try it. It actually floored me on how delicious it was! The Guinness caramelizes the onions beautifully and brings a rich (not bitter) flavour to the soup — dare I say, even better than the traditional French Onion Soup. I had this soup in my head all winter long and knew eventually a recipe needed to be developed so what better time to develop it than for St. Patrick’s Day. Other than a little slicing, it’s a pretty easy recipe, I even made my own no knead bread (because JT was up at Limerick Township doing his Councillor duties!).

The recipe makes 1.75 L and it’s totally freezable (or you can have it for three lunches and three dinners like we did — I liked the soup THAT much).

The broth is a bit richer than traditional French Onion Soup

 

Makes 1.75 L (depending on how much you boil it down)

Ingredients:

• 650 g sweet onions, finely sliced
• 200 g leeks, finely sliced
• 440 mL Guinness draft
• Quick spray of canola oil
• 3 bay leaves
• 1/4 cup unpasteurized Apple Cider Vinegar 1 L beef stock
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup grated old cheddar per serving
• Salt to taste

Directions:

1. Sweat the onions and leeks in a large oven proof Dutch oven until translucent and have begun to caramelize (about 30 minutes).
2. Pre-heat oven to 300° F (149° C)
3. Add the Guinness and apple cider vinegar and bring to a boil. Add bay leaves and give it a stir.
4. Cover with a loosely cut piece of parchment with a hole in the centre like the illustration and place in oven until onions are richly caramelized and Guinness has cooked down about 30-45 minutes.
5. Remove from the oven and add 1 L of beef stock and bring back to a boil on the stove, taste and season now (keeping in mind that the cheddar will also add some saltiness).
6. Create large homemade croutons from a couple of slices of no knead bread (cut into 2-3 cm (1″) cubes and toss with a little canola oil, toast until crispy all over.
7. Ladle about 1 cup of soup into each pre-warmed bowl with a generous serving of cooked onions. Add broth to cover and sprinkle some grated cheddar over the onions. Add a few croutons and add more cheddar. Broil on high until cheese melts and is bubbly. Serve immediately, don’t stop to take photos.

Notes:

• There are a lot of onions in this version because I was looking for a hearty soup.
• Notice I didn’t do the calorie calculation, there are some things we just don’t need to know.
• The vinegar adds a little bite and bit of sweetness, if you don’t like my Onion Confit then omit it or add less (or even substitute a good, rich balsamic vinegar).

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Deconstructed French Onion Soup

This past weekend was unseasonably cold at the lake.

A very dear friend of mine invited me to a taping of a daytime lifestyle show called Steven & Chris last week. It was their first show of their eighth season so it was very special, that’s a long time to be on a show and what’s even more impressive is that they’ve been life partners for 22 years! My friend has been a long-time fan of the show and has been to several tapings over the years so we got the VIP treatment; we were the first to be ushered into the studio and first to be seated (front row, no less). It was truly an action packed show of which I’ll share the details after it airs, but I will share a few pics.

This is an HD camera.

Our very energetic Audience Coordinators.They knew my friend by name!

An ussie. Yes, it’s a new word.

Steven is the handsome devil on the left and Chris is the cutie-pie on the right.

Chef Michael Smith is a special guest (centre)

My dear friend invited me to another taping on September 30 when the special guest is a World Famous Chef! But I can’t say who just yet! I’m so excited. Thanks so much Angela, I really appreciate that you chose me for these exciting events!

A caramelized, baked onion in a bed of beef stock and a Gruyere tuille

Serves 4

Ingredients:

• 4 ordinary cooking onions
• 3 cups beef stock
• a few stems of fresh tarragon
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cup grated Gruyere cheese
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Please refer to this recipe on baking the onions and proceed to step 4.
2. Lower the oven temperature to 250° F (121° C), add the beef stock, bay leaf and tarragon stems and cover the dutch oven with a lid or foil. Continue to bake for 2-3 hours or until the onions are extremely soft.
3. To make the tuiles, line a baking sheet with parchment. Turn oven to broil, high heat. Pile 4 evenly spread circles of the grated Gruyere onto the baking sheet, about 5 cm or 2 inches apart. Broil on high until cheese is completely melted and begins to colour. Watch carefully as the cheese will burn very quickly. Remove from heat and place the parchment with cheese tuiles on a cooling rack and cool completely. When cooled, gently remove the tuiles and set aside.
4. Discard the bay leaf. Remove onions from the beef stock and cut into the skins in quarters to reveal the soft centre. Remove the inedible onion skin. Place cut onions into the centre of a pretty bowl and ladle in a little stock. Garnish with the Gruyere tuille and the baked tarragon stems.

It tastes just like French onion soup.

I just can’t get enough of these tasty baked onions!

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A Room Temperature Baked Potato Soup

I’ve been doing quite a bit of recipe testing lately. It’s a lot of fun because many of the recipes are ones I wouldn’t normally try, so it pushes me to try and taste new things. One of the recipes needed baking potatoes but of a specific size so when I had some left over, I figured why not make soup (plus I had lots of stock left over too!)? I knew from past experience that if I called this Vichyssoise I would be lambasted because I didn’t use leeks nor did I use cream so, to nip it in the butt, I just called it Chilled Baked Potato Soup! 😛

I made this for lunch and I didn’t have anything else with it so I wanted it hearty. Add more stock if you don’t want it as thick.

JT: “It really does taste like a baked potato!”

Makes about four servings 375 mL each (1 1/2 cups)

Ingredients:

• 1 large baking potato, scrubbed clean
• 1/2 onion chopped
• 4-5 cloves garlic
• 1/2 cup chicken stock (or vegetable stock for vegetarians)
• 1/4 strip of bacon, cooked until crispy, per serving (substitute with feta or crumbled vegan feta (recipe to come))
• 1 tsp of sour cream or crême fraiche or Greek yogurt, per serving (or vegan sour cream)
• 1 chopped green onion
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350°F (177°C). Pierce the baking potato with a fork (so it doesn’t explode) and wrap with parchment and then foil. Bake for 45-60 minutes or until a cake tester inserts easily.
2. Meanwhile, in a small ramekin, add the garlic cloves (with skin on), the chopped onion and cover with 1/2 cup of chicken broth. Season with a little salt and cover the ramekin with foil. Bake along side the potato for 30-45 minutes or until the garlic is very soft.
3. When the potato is done, cut in half and scoop out all of the flesh with a spoon into a glass bowl. Squeeze out the garlic cloves from their skin and add to the potatoes, pour in the chicken stock with the onions and salt into the potato mix. With your stick blender, purée adding stock until you achieve the consistency you want. Press through a fine sieve to ensure it’s silky smooth.
4. Serve at room temperature (or reheat), garnished with 1 tsp sour cream, crumbled bacon and chopped green onion.

A creamy, dreamy room temperature soup. No that’s not a fish bowl back there!

Notes:

• I’m in the process of creating a recipe for vegan feta (a brined cheese) so stay tuned!
• The soup definitely tastes better at room temperature rather than chilled, you get more of the potato flavour at room temperature.
• If you heat the soup, add some grated cheddar on top, I didn’t because I thought it might be weird because it wouldn’t melt.
• You may replace the stock for roasting the garlic with olive oil, I did not because I wanted it a bit healthier.

Based on 4 servings

Using non-vegetarian ingredients

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Far East Inspired Soup

Hello everyone! I must apologize that I have missed a couple of posts, not because of anything other than laziness. I thought I had ‘banked’ enough to last me through the weekend but I hadn’t so my blog remained inactive over the weekend. Our wonderful friends Paul and T paid us a visit, arriving on Friday and going back home on Monday. We had a great time, did lots of fun stuff (yes, I’ll blog about that soon) and ate and drank excessively! Now we are recovering until next time!

I’m inspired by many of the blogs I follow, if not for the recipe, but perhaps an ingredient or even a plating, but I know when an inspiration hits me over the stuffed-up head and it resonates throughout the day with a burning desire (no, not THAT!). Kelly over at Inspired Edibles presented this soup at the beginning of the year and it stuck in my head like that song (sorry about that, peeps) and I knew I had to make it, or something like it. I adore the Asian flavours in a soup, add some rice noodles and I’m in Seventh Heaven. It turned out that I didn’t have some of the ingredients for Kelly’s soup, so I had to improvise, but let me tell you it was YUM. That’s Y. U. M. It was like a lemongrass, sweet and sour, vegetable soup, all of the things that make you happy. That’s right, the epitome of Happy Food.

Sweet, sour, tangy, delicious

Asian Inspired Soup

Serves 1  in a large bowl (ingredients are just rough, you can use your own taste to determine your version)

Ingredients:

• 1 tsp Sesame oil and a splash of canola oil
• 140 g mushrooms (about 3/4 cup), quartered
• 100 g shrimps and scallops (3 large shrimp and 1 scallop), cleaned and sliced down the middle
• 60 g onions, sliced finely (about 1/4 cup)
• 1 tsp coriander
• 10 g garlic, roughly chopped (2-3 cloves)
• 10 g fresh ginger, roughly chopped (about 2-3 tablespoons)
• 10 g lemongrass, roughly chopped (about 2-3 tables spoons)
• 5 g Galangal
• 2 tbsp lime juice
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 2 tbsp Hoisin sauce
• 3 Kaffir lime leaves
• 2 cups vegetable stock
• 1 cup water
• 1 roma tomato, quartered
• handful of rice noodles

Garnish:

• 1/4 cup finely sliced green onion
• pepper flakes

Directions:

1. Heat the water in your kettle until boiling. Pour over the rice noodles and allow to sit until they are totally reconstituted, 10-15 minutes. Do not over soak, you want a bit of a bite to it.
2. In a large soup pan, heat the two oils until hot but not smoky (the sesame oil has a very low smoke point). Add the onions and stir until slightly translucent. Add the shrimp and scallop and cook lightly. Turn the heat down to a simmer and add the mushrooms. Sprinkle the coriander on the shrimp and onions and stir quickly until aromatic.
3. Combine the garlic, ginger, lemongrass and galangal in an infuser (mine is like this) and put it into the soup pan. Add all of the stock and water and add the lime juice, fish sauce, and hoisin saucekafir leaves, galangal, fish sauce, lime juice, and hoisin sauce. Stir well.
4. Bring to a very light boil and allow to simmer for about 5-6 minutes (be careful so your shrimp and scallop don’t over cook). Add the tomatoes but don’t overcook, just heat them up.
5. Put one third of the cold noodles into a large decorative white bowl. Add ladle-fulls of the soup and garnish with the green onion and pepper flakes. Enjoy.

Cooks tips:

• Store your fresh ginger knobs in the freezer in a resealable container; grate on a fine micro-plane grater when required, you need not peel it! Keeps indefinitely.
• I usually buy a large quantity of lemongrass and chop them finely in my food processor, and then I freeze them in a reusable container. I can usually break off what I need.
• If you are taking the left overs to work, I recommend storing the cooked noodles in a separate container to the soup so that they don’t absorb any more liquid. When you reheat the soup, do so to just before boiling (so the chicken doesn’t cook further) and that way when you put the chilled noodles in, they will cool it down to a palatable level.
• Fish sauce is used in thai cooking instead of salt.
• To save time, I have sometimes used Rosa’s Lime Cordial instead of lime juice, but you have to remember NOT to add the hoisin sauce as that is also sweet.

Still tastes the same, just in sheeps clothing

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Fresh Figs, Goats Cheese, Caramelized Onion and Walnuts on Arugula and Spinach

We’re still on vacation, and on our last night in Lyon we tool a wonderful cooking class; our chef-host had a beautiful fig tree in the back yard, and we ate fresh figs right from the tree! Although I prepared this post well before we left, I thought it appropriate to post before I return. I do hope you’re all doing well, know that You know that I miss reading about what you’re cooking and that I’ll be back next week with lots of stories!!

One of our dear friends brought us a package of fresh, beautiful figs as a hostess gift (I love my friends!). Coincidentally I had taken out a portion of goats cheese from the deep freeze, so this salad was literally staring me in the face. A quick weeknight meal. There are no directions or quantities, do what your heart dictates, you can even throw in some crispy prosciutto or don’t make it crispy. It’s simple and wonderful. I sautéed the onions until they were soft and then I poured in about 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar and cooked it down until it was the consistency of syrup. You can use this to dress the salad…it doesn’t need much.

My salad has fresh figs, quartered, toasted sliced almonds, goats cheese, caramelized onion, balsamic dressing, arugula (rocket) and spinach.

It’s kinda like the kitchen sink salad

I’m posting this from our little apartment in Paris in the Le Marais … Correction: Montmatre district. Here is a little peak. Cheers!

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Susur Lee Inspired Singapore Slaw, AKA 19 Ingredient Slaw

We first had this slaw in NYC about 5 years ago at Susur Lee’s now defunct Shang restaurant in NYC’s LES (Lower East Side). Fortunately, he still serves this incredible dish in Toronto and DC. This is not a new slaw in our household. In fact, a month doesn’t go by without a version of this slaw surfacing (here, here, here, here, here, here and here) offering up left-overs for the entire week. Yes, we love it THAT much! I decided it would make a lovely main course with BBQ’d rib eye slices (the way Lorraine makes the steak here) last weekend for our dinner party. It was a huge success and now I have slaw left overs for the week!

I’ve had a few people ask me for the recipe recently, you can see the original Susur Lee’s recipe on Food Network or in his gorgeous book A Culinary Life; my version below, is my version. Now the ingredient list is daunting, but I beg you not to be put off, it is a recipe worth making. Also, a lot of time can be cut down if you get everything organized “mise en place” before beginning. I will go through some of my time saving techniques in TIPS below and hopefully it will help encourage you to make it. It is one damn good slaw, if I do say so myself.

Despite the overwhelming number of ingredients, it is WORTH making this slaw

It’s not all that time consuming if you have everything ‘mise en place’

It’s such a colourful slaw, that your eyes sing with glee when you first see it. Please click here to see the slaw Chef Lee and his famous slaw.

You can chop your herbs by hand, but I needed a time saver on this day, so I chopped them in my Cuisinart mini processor

It’s all about balance in this slaw, so tasting throughout is very important

The colourful dry ingredients above.

By keeping the ‘wet’ ingredients separate to the ‘dry’ you will preserve the freshness of this slaw and be able to stretch it out over a week

It’s all about balance of flavours.

The dressing is sweet, tart, tangy and a bit spicy

I had a luncheon of grilled shrimp and the slaw. YUM YUM YUM!

The assembly with the pickled onions, watercress and grilled shrimp

Susur Lee’s Singapore Slaw, AKA 19 Ingredient Slaw

Serve 8-10 (please click here to see the original unadulterated recipe)

Ingredients:

Pickled Red Onion (make 2 days ahead):

• 1 red onion, sliced thinly on a mandoline
• 1 cup rice wine vinegar
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black peppercorns
• 1/4 teaspoon fennel seeds
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 sprig thyme

Salted Apricot Dressing (make 2 days ahead):

• 1 cup dried apricot
• 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon mirin
• 1 1/2 tablespoons onion, finely chopped
  
• 1/2 tablespoon peeled and chopped fresh ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons sugar (taste and adjust)
• lime juice (to taste) I find the dressing a little sweet and the lime juice helps cut it, but you must taste it to be sure there is balance.

For the Singapore Slaw Salad:

• 1 pickled red onion
• 1 1/2 cups Apricot Dressing
• 1 large English cucumber, julienned
• 1 medium sized mango, firm but not soft, peeled and julienned
• 1 large carrot, peeled and julienned
• 1 small jicama, peeled and julienned
• 1 medium sized fennel bulb, julienned (this is my addition)
• 1/2 head of purple cabbage, julienned (this is my addition)
• 4 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds (to dress)
• handful of watercress (to dress)

For the herb mix:

• 1/2 cup of Thai basil leaves, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup of mint, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup of cilantro, leaves only, finely chopped
• 2 green onions, green and white parts, finely chopped

Directions:

1. Make the pickled onion and dressing 2 days ahead, so it has time to develop the flavours, plus it will take the pressure off having to do everything in one day. Store both in the refrigerator.

For the Pickled Red Onion:

1. Peel and julienne red onion and set aside in a medium bowl. In small saucepan, bring vinegar and water to a boil. Season with salt, peppercorns, fennel seeds, bay leaf, and thyme; continue boiling for another 5 minutes. Pour mixture into a heat proof jar while hot and let sit for at least 1 hour or two days in the fridge.

For the Salted Apricot Dressing:

1. In an immersion blender container, combine the dried apricot, vinegar, mirin, onion, sugar, ginger, and salt. Purée until smooth. Taste and add lime juice and additional sugar if necessary.

TIPS:

• A mandolin with a fine julienne attachment is a MUST. I use my Borner Roko Vegetable Shredder. Part of the beauty of this slaw is that all the ingredients are julienned uniformly, plus you’ll be standing for a very long time if you have to do this by hand! You need not clean it out between shredding as it all goes into the same pot.
• Get yourself two large bowls and one medium sized bowl. One large bowl is for your ‘dry’ ingredients and one is for the peelings; the medium sized bowl is for your wet ingredients.

For the Singapore Slaw Salad:

1. Julienne the wet ingredients first mango and cucumber, as there are only two, combine well and cover with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator.
2. Julienne the ‘dry’ ingredients: carrot, jicama, fennel and purple cabbage, combine well and set aside.
3. Wash and dry all the herbs for the herb mix, including the green onion. Add to a little food processor (I find the fuller it is the better) and processes until all the herbs are finely chopped. Add to the “dry” ingredients and mix well. Cover and refrigerate until serving.

Serving:

1. In a new bowl, take 2/3 of the “dry” ingredients and 1/3 of the “wet” and combine thoroughly. Dress with about 1/4 of the dressing (start small and increase as required) and combine well. Serve on a platter, piled high in the centre. Sprinkle sesame seeds overall and dress with the watercress leaves. Add the pickled onion over the summit to curl here and there (you don’t need a lot, just a few strands). Serve immediately with grilled chicken, grilled steak (please see Lorraine’s amazing technique for a full flavoured steak here), tofu or shrimp.

Thai Marinated Steak:

Prepare your steak just as Lorraine shows you in her blog here (don’t worry, it works like a charm!). Once it has aged for a couple of days, marinate it in the marinade below for a few hours.

Ingredients:

• 50 mL lime juice
• 1/2 tsp sesame oil
• 1/4 cup cilantro stems and roots
• 1/2 tsp fish sauce
• 2 tbsp mirin
• 1/2 tbsp sugar
• 2 cloves garlic finely chopped

Directions:

1. Combine the ingredients in the bowl of an immersion blender and blitz until smooth.
2. Pour over the aged steak and refrigerate. Turn the steak throughout the day occassionally.
3. Remove steak from fridge for about 1 hour to bring to room temperature before grilling.
4. Follow Lorraine’s instructions on grilling.

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Onion Bahjis

• 1 large Vidalia onion, medium coarsely chopped
• 2 cups chick pea flour
• 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1-2 cups water
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp meat masala
• ½ L peanut oil

1. Sift spices into the chick pea flour.
2. Mix chick pea flour into egg mixture, adding water to make a thick batter. Add onions and mix well.
3. Heat peanut oil until it is 350°F. Fry by teaspoon full until golden brown.
4. Cool and freeze in a zip lock bag.
5. To reheat, pre heat oven to 350°F, place in a single row on a baking sheet and bake for 15-25 minutes, until defrosted and warm all the way through.
6. Serve with your favourite sweet and spicy sauce (we served it with the Papaya BBQ Sauced)

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